There is a lot in Tom Miller's fantastical new novel that will feel sort of, but not exactly, familiar. The Philosopher's Flight is set in the United States at the start of World War I. That was the first war in which air power played a role. But in Miller's novel, flying is the almost exclusive domain of women. And their flight is not with airplanes, but with the power of empirical philosophy.
Into this world steps Robert Weekes, one of the few men with the ability to fly. He is studying the craft as one of a handful of men accepted into school at Radcliffe College. It's a world in which he is the outsider, even as the empirical philosophers are, themselves, outsiders, as they come into conflict with a movement called "Trencherism."
"It was important to me," says Miller, "that it be sort of a double-reverse, if you will." Weekes is discriminated against as a male in a female-dominated world, but the Philosophers face growing discrimination, as well.
While the plot is the stuff of historical science fiction, Weekes's interest in the rescue and evacuation wing of philosophical flying is informed, in part by Miller's experience as an EMT. The Wauwatosa native taught college-level English in Pittsburgh while working in the emergency medical field. Today, he writes novels while working many long hours as an emergency room physician in Madison. And he says the fields have more overlap than you might imagine.
"Medicine is a wonderful training for any writer," Miller explains, "particularly emergency medicine. To meet people from truly every background - drunk, drug-addicted, mental illness, chronically ill, the homeless population - are not groups of people I had a lot of contact with, growing up."
Tom Miller will discuss The Philosopher's Flight Tuesday evening, February 20, at Boswell Book Company.
